Football: CU Buffs to unveil new video boards

Colorado fans will experience the new $7 million High Definition video boards in Folsom Field on Saturday for the first time when the Buffs play host to Sacramento State in the home opener.

But fans won't see more than a dozen workers a quarter-mile away at the Coors Events Center who will be operating the boards in a new state of the art 3,000 square-foot studio and video production facility that will be where most of the CU-related programming for the Pac-12 Network originates.

The events center control room alone has more than 3,000 new cables and 26 miles of new cabling helping to feed dozens of servers and fill 64 terabytes of storage space.

The facility is tucked away in the bowels of the events center about 25 feet from the north end of the basketball court. BuffVision increased its use of student workers from two in most seasons in the past to five this year because the Pac-12 Network is televising so many more CU events and it is also generating original content.

Colorado plays its first football game on the fledgling network this week. CU already is well ahead of most of the other schools in the conference in installing the infrastructure to be able to work seamlessly with the network.

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"It's probably the difference between having like a corvette and maybe like a wheelbarrow," BuffVision director Deric Swanson said comparing the equipment at his disposal now versus a year ago. "We've really caught up to where the industry is. We have probably the most state of the art facility in the Pac-12 right now, but all the other schools are making these same kind of changes. So hopefully in the next year or two we'll all be this far."

Colorado officials believe the new video boards will significantly improve the overall fan experience in Folsom on game days. The boards will receive video from four stationary cameras in the stadium as well as one wireless camera BuffVision plans to have fun with by taking it into the stands, down on the field and almost every in the stadium.

All the new technology being used might come with a few hiccups, but athletic director Mike Bohn said fans will like what they see in the stadium on Saturdays and what they see on the network if they can't make it to Boulder for a game.

"It's something that will be a dramatic game changer for our fans on game day," Bohn said.

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